In this edition of Weekly Focus APAC: Tencent Joins JV to Drive Grocery Retail Business in Chinese City; SEA Centennial Online Shoppers Will Abandon Cart if Preferred Payment Option Unavailable; JD.com Unveils Blockchain Research Lab with Two Partners; and Grab Partners Mastercard for Prepaid Cards. Tencent Joins JV to Drive Grocery Retail Business in Chinese City Tencent has banded with two retail groups, A.S. Watson Group and Yonghui, to form a joint venture aimed at creating “the largest grocery retail business” [...]

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This week, Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has officially launched an e-commerce site in Thailand alongside local retail group, Central Group. The new addition is part of JD.com’s efforts to expand its presence in Southeast Asia, where it currently operates an e-commerce site in Indonesia and has invested in Vietnamese business-to-consumer e-commerce operator, Tiki. The Thai platform, called ‘JD Central’, had been running in beta since 18 June, offering products across various categories, including electronics, fashion, home appliances, books, processed foods, and cosmetics, [...]

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This week, Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has unveiled plans to expand its network of fresh food stores, 7Fresh, across China as well as made its foray into the Korean market with a new office set up in Seoul. JD.com said it inked agreements with 16 real estate companies to facilitate the expansion of its supermarket chain, which was launched earlier this year, into Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. The partners included China Poly Group, Vanke, and Yuexiu Property. Fresh produce accounts for [...]

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This week, Alibaba Group has unveiled a one-year leadership succession plan as its executive chairman, Jack Ma, prepares to leave the company he co-founded and hand over the reins to current CEO Daniel Zhang. Ma, whose face and name have become synonymous with the e-commerce giant, will remain in his role until 10 September next year to ensure a smooth transition to Zhang, according to Alibaba. The announcement, which was released on 10 September when Ma celebrated his 54th birthday, also revealed [...]

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Lazada is banking on data to help retailers offer better a shopping experience on its e-commerce platforms and, hence, drive sales of their products. In this aspect, the Southeast Asian online marketplace already has been tapping the industry knowhow and technologies of its majority shareholder, Alibaba. Such sharing has included the Chinese e-commerce giant’s search algorithm and deep-learning technologies, Jing Yin, Lazada’s co-president of commercial, said in an interview. The executive himself had spent five years based out of Alibaba’s Hangzhou [...]

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This week, JD.com has teamed up with several hotels to showcase its technologies and marketplace products, enabling guests to purchase items they find in their rooms. Selected rooms at these partner hotels including Wanda, Sheraton, Beijing 5L, and Greenland, would be suited up with products identified to be popular amongst travellers, such as power banks to charge their devices, a Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush, and JD.com’s smart speaker cum personal assistant device. The Chinese e-commerce giant said it introduced the programme after [...]

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This week, Google has unveiled a rebranding of its digital payments service and plans for further expansion of the platform in India, where consumers have made more than 750 million transactions with the app. Called ‘Tez’, when it was launched in the country last September, the payments platform since has chalked up more than 22 million users – including 1.2 million local businesses – each month, according to Caesar Sengupta, Google’s general manager for payments and the company’s next billion users [...]

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This week, JD.com unveils a new blockchain platform that it says is aimed at helping companies access and develop their own applications on the technology to better secure their operations. The new platform allows businesses to create and modify smart contracts as well as streamline operations, such as track-and-trace movement of goods, transaction settlement, and authentication of certifications. It also will enable businesses that lack the necessary capabilities to access and tap blockchain technology for their own applications, according to [...]

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This week, China’s top 10 e-commerce players have been unveiled and are expected to account for more than 85% of the country’s total online retail sales by year-end, with Alibaba taking pole position. The market leader is expected to grab a 58.2% share of total e-commerce sales, followed by JD.com with a 16.3% share, according to eMarketer. The two leaders, though, would face increasing pressure from new market players that have emerged as “credible competitors” over the past few years, offering [...]

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In this weekly segment, ExchangeWire sums up key industry updates on ad tech from around the Asia-Pacific region – and in this edition: AU Consumers Slow to Act on Privacy Concerns; Singapore Programmatic Ad Spend for Travel Audiences Grows 280%; Alibaba Builds AI Copywriter for Marketers; Addressable TV Will Better Arm AU Broadcasters; MCN Launches TV Ad Management Platform; and iProspect & Ashoka Ink APAC Partnership to ‘Drive Change’. AU Consumers Slow to Act on Privacy Concerns A large majority of Australians [...]

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